Scared to Eat? : Health: Scientists at a recent conference say the nation’s food supply is safer than ever. But consumers remain unconvinced.

Last year’s Alar scare, along with other high-profile food crises, has done for the food industry what a DC-10 crash does for the airline industry--created overblown fears about essentially safe products, according to many health experts.

The nation’s food supply--from fresh produce to foods with eternal shelf life--is safer than ever, the experts say. But consumer confidence about food safety is at an all-time low.

That was the sobering topic before 300 health scientists who gathered at Michigan State University last week for a conference on food safety and dietary health.

According to a 1989 Food Marketing Institute survey, 82% of consumers polled said they believed that residues in the food supply, like pesticides and herbicides, constitute a serious hazard to health. In a 1989 Gallup Poll, 73% of respondents said they favored fewer pesticides and herbicides in food, even if it meant having to pay more for food.

The problem, as many industry experts and scientists see it, is that consumer reaction to potential health risks from food--from Alar on apples to salmonella in chicken--is “overblown.”

“If we didn’t think consumer reaction was overblown, we probably wouldn’t be having this conference,” said one scientist.

And yet science has been unable to convince consumers that the food supply is safe. According to many observers, the gulf between what science says and consumers believe is linked to two factors:

* The food industry and government have not made the risks of ingesting certain foods and chemicals clear in a way that allows consumers to decide risks for themselves.

* The public often is initially informed by the media about potential health risks related to diet, increasing the mistrust of government and industry.

The issue of trust has stung the food industry most sharply. Incidents in which manufacturers have been reprimanded for making false health claims on packaging has taught Americans to be wary of any information from industry, said Kristen McNutt, a private consultant to food companies.

“If they don’t trust you, it doesn’t matter what you are saying,” McNutt told food industry leaders. Government doesn’t fare much better, she said: “Consumer confidence in the system to protect the food supply is taking a nose dive.”

“People have been sensitized to view their food with suspicion,” Leveille said. “We need to swing the pendulum back to a more evenhanded evaluation of the risks and benefits in goods and stress moderation, balance and variety.”

Scientists blame consumers for focusing attention on risks that are of minimal importance while overlooking risks that can be personally controlled. Areas of concern include essential nutrients (such as fats, carbohydrates, protein and vitamins), additives (such as salt and flavorings), agricultural chemicals, microorganisms and chemicals produced during cooking and processing.

According to one assessment, consumers rank pesticide residues and food additives as their top two food safety concerns. Environmental and industrial contaminants rank third.

But most scientists cite naturally occurring microorganisms--such as salmonella and listeria, which can cause gastrointestinal illness--as the biggest food-related threat to health, said Sanford Miller of the University of Texas Health Science Center.

Miller said consumers’ fears of chemicals are the root of the disparity.

Incidents such as the Alar episode early last year, when a consumer group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, reported that unsafe levels of the chemicals were discovered on apples, shattered consumer confidence in the food system, experts said.

Despite vastly differing estimates of the risks of Alar from the council and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA said it would ban the product. But before the ban could be issued, Alar was pulled from the market by its manufacturer, Uniroyal.

“The consensus of the scientific community was that it wasn’t a problem,” Miller said. “But very often regulatory agencies move to remove something not because they think it will harm anyone but because prudence dictates.”

Alar was a “blow dealt to consumer confidence,” Leveille said. But scientists in both industry and government say many studies show foods are generally safe.

“I don’t know of any evidence that our foods, as we get them in any supermarket or grocery store in the United States, have caused anyone to have ill health--other than tummy-aches,” said Dr. Fredrick Stare, a professor of nutrition at Harvard University. Stare co-authored a book in the 1970s downplaying the risks of food-related illness.

“Most of the food-related illnesses we have are bacterial contamination--largely bacterial contamination in the home after the food has gone from the supermarket into the kitchen,” he said. “I completely believe that our food supply is safe.”

Many experts attending the conference said they are much more concerned with Americans’ overconsumption of the pleasurable components of their diets, such as dietary fat and cholesterol in desserts and snack foods.

“A greater concern with diet will probably do much more for controlling cancer than concern about carcinogenic food additives,” said William Lijinsky of the National Cancer Institute.

Nevertheless, many food-safety experts said health risks are rarely presented to the public in an easy-to-understand manner. Consumers are often faced with extreme views: That a chemical is particularly bad or perfectly safe, said John A. Moore, president of the Irvine-based Institute for Evaluating Health Risks.

A chemical can be safe in small amounts but harmful in excessive amounts, Moore said. But consumers rarely receive this kind of explanation and believe chemicals are unsafe in any quantity, he said.

“There are still large segments of the population that hold to a ‘zero-tolerance risk,’ ” Moore said. “We need to agree on what an acceptable risk is.”

Government and industry leaders should make information on food risks more accessible to consumers, Lijinsky said.

“I think we have an obligation to tell the public that a substance is carcinogenic if it is,” he said. “People should know about saccharin (which has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals), but they still use saccharin. There’s a warning label on saccharin, but they make their choice.”

Consumers should recognize that there are many uncertainties in trying to predict whether a substance will cause cancer or other health problems, Lijinsky said.

“We don’t have any idea of how to calculate the risk of cancer related to exposures of something like Alar,” he said. “But the fact that there is a risk means the public should be notified so they can make a choice.”

The burden of change falls on industry and government to make more quantitative data available to consumers, McNutt said.

“The objective is not to convince them it’s safe,” she said. “It’s almost impossible to prove safety. We’ve been scared to tell consumers that. We have to be able to say we don’t have all the answers.”

FOOD SAFETY: HOW CONFIDENT ARE WE?

Completely confident: 23% Mostly confident: 58% Doubtful:19%

On whom do consumers rely to determine food safety? Themselves: 41% Government: 23% Manufacturers: 14% Retailers: 10% Consumer groups: 8% No answer: 4%

Source: Nabisco Brands Inc.